Public views shift on sex abuse of children / Putting such stories on the front page helps remove stigma

Jill Leovy, Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 10, 2006

Joelle Casteix knew something had changed when she saw sexual abuse by priests spoofed on "The Simpsons."

In one episode, the animated residents of Springfield lapsed into awkward silence in the presence of a Catholic priest. Nothing more was needed to get across a dig at the church scandal.

Five years after the clergy sexual-abuse scandal exploded in the Boston archdiocese, the men and women who have come forward to tell their stories have shaken not only the Roman Catholic Church. They also have propelled a readjustment in public attitudes about childhood sexual abuse.

That was made clear again last Friday, when the Los Angeles Archdiocese announced a $60 million settlement that some believe is a precursor to the nation's most costly abuse payout. Victims and their advocates staged public news conferences and spoke about their abuse with a frankness that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

Among them was Casteix, 36, Southwest regional director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, who won an earlier settlement over her abuse by a Catholic lay teacher in Santa Ana (Orange County). She said the change was a sign of an approaching "tipping point" regarding the issue of child sexual abuse.

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The change is evident in rising numbers of victims speaking out, growing stacks of lawsuits and momentous change in public attitudes -- manifest in everything from revelations by celebrities to the antics of "Simpsons" characters.

SNAP members such as Casteix hope the change will bring more than just large monetary settlements. They want full disclosure of alleged complicity by church officials in covering up abuse and indictments of high-level church officials.

Regardless of whether this happens, "there's been a sea change," said Andrea Leavitt, an attorney for some victims. "It used to be victims were considered dirty, sullied damaged goods. We don't look at them that way anymore."

Donald Steier, who has represented accused priests for more than two decades, compared the shift to the way Mothers Against Drunk Driving raised awareness about traffic fatalities. "When you put it on the front page often enough, and in front of people's face, they become more aware and enlightened," Steier said. "And to the extent that has happened, that is a very positive thing. ... Probably the only positive thing."

Twenty-five years ago, society was in what Astrid Heger called "denial," spiked with antagonism toward those who sought to expose abuse. Sex-abuse experts such as Heger, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Southern California, could expect to encounter open skepticism when they sought to diagnose children, she said.

"People didn't believe it, or they said maybe it was part of normal childhood, and maybe not a crime," she said. The first successful prosecution of child-molestation cases began in the early 1980s, she said -- though usually medical evidence was needed to prove a case.

And some topics remained untouchable. "Very early on in my career, I was involved in a case where some children said they had been molested by a priest in church," Heger said. "They were immediately removed from the case by prosecutors, because they were not considered to be credible."

The McMartin preschool case in the mid-1980s was a kind of reverse watershed, she said. That case, in which hundreds of children made increasingly bizarre claims of abuse against the family owners and employers of a preschool in Manhattan Beach (Los Angeles County), eventually fell apart in acquittals, hung juries and questions about prosecutorial excess.

But instead of setting back advocacy efforts, the McMartin case pushed things forward.

That's because medical and legal professionals afterward embraced a more disciplined, cautious approach toward investigating sexual abuse. That did much to strengthen the credibility of the cases, experts say.

But nothing opened the floodgates like the Catholic priest-abuse scandal, many observers say. Victims were vocal. Their lawsuits captivated the media and public. Their movement spread nationally and internationally. "Power and numbers," in Heger's words, suddenly had propelled the issue to the public stage.

In 2002, California legislators, in response to the church scandal, approved a change to statute-of-limitations provisions that made it easier for abuse victims to sue churches and other institutions.

Carlos Perez-Carillo, 40, a Los Angeles social-work supervisor and SNAP activist with a case pending against the church, first told his parents around 1986 of his teenage abuse by a consecrated brother in Playa del Rey (Los Angeles County). At the time, he said, he was convinced no one but they would believe him.

Fifteen years later, when he began speaking publicly about it, Perez-Carrillo was less worried about being disbelieved. But he was still bracing for ridicule.

It never came. "It was just the opposite," he said. "I had people coming up to me all the time saying, 'I've got to tell you something that I've never told anyone.' "

Victims of clergy abuse, he concluded, have tapped into a vein of secret shame and grief that had long plagued people in many walks of life in America, and which had been awaiting its moment to be exposed. "It's a tragedy to know how many people have been suffering," he said. "But it's good when people have the strength to come forward. They don't have to look at that darkness forever."

That the victims' allegations involved such a hallowed institution as the Roman Catholic Church also served to drive home the point that sexual abuse could happen anywhere.

"It makes the job easier for prosecutors of all kinds of sex crimes against children," Loyola Law School Professor Stan Goldman said. "If you have what appears to be a significant number of priests engaging in this kind of behavior, then it could be anybody."

To some, the pendulum might have swung too far. Increasingly punitive and elaborate restrictions on sex offenders are being questioned by courts and critics.

In courts, it might have become "sometimes too easy" to convince jurors abuse has occurred, Goldman said. There is danger that the kind of mass hysteria that surrounded the McMartin case also could engulf the Catholic clergy, he said.

For Heger, the USC clinician, and Leavitt, the lawyer, the most hopeful new sign is that the public increasingly accepts that sexually abused children suffer damage well into adulthood. That acknowledgment helps victims reveal their pasts and begin healing, they say.

Adult survivors of clergy abuse who speak out, file lawsuits and advocate for other victims might regain the power so painfully stripped from them by their assailants, Leavitt said. "When they are no longer silent, big changes occur," she said.

For other victims, the changed climate has made it easier to seek help, Heger said. "They recover. ... They do extremely well if they get the attention they need," she said. "It is never too late."

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